My mother pushed her plate away and sat up straighter. “What do you want to talk about, Laura?”
“This is hard for me to say, Mom, so bear with me. But things are kind of . . . well, I need a little time to be alone with my family. I think it might be best if I drive you home.”
“When?”
“Today.”
She drew in a sharp breath, started to say something, and then rose abruptly to carry her dishes to the sink. “You can take me to the airport right now.” She turned on the water hard to rinse out her cup and ended up splattering herself. She jumped back and dropped the cup, shattering it, then put her hands to her face and began to weep. I walked slowly over to her, stepped past the shards of china, and put my arms around her. She hugged me back abruptly, tightly, and then whispered into my ear, “You know, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Caroline told you everything?”
“Yes. And I know it was you who came after Caroline with the knife that day, Mom.”
Inside myself, a frayed string on which hung a last hope: Say no. Say you never did that, it never happened. But what she said was, “Yes.”
I closed my eyes, swallowed. “And . . . I know about Claire. Aunt Fran told me.”
She stepped away from me, sighed deeply. There passed a long moment during which she would not look at me. Then she said, “I’ll go and pack. And then I would like to be driven to the airport.”
I wanted to say, You know what? Your days of dictating are over. Your needs coming first? That’s over. But all I said was, “I’m going to pack too, Mom. I’ll drive you home.”
IT TOOK TWO HOURS OF DRIVING before either of us said anything. While my mother packed, I rather abruptly told my children what I was going to do, then called Pete at the store to tell him the same. When we left, I looked away when my mother hugged Anthony and Hannah and tried not to mind their stiffness when I hugged them too. When I spoke privately to Anthony, telling him I was taking Grandma home because I wasn’t comfortable with her behavior during the babysitting incident, he said, “God, Mom, you’re pretty hard on people.” I wanted to argue my case, but I remembered Hannah’s reaction when I tried to tell her more. In the end, I just told him I’d see him in a few days and left. At the right time, I hoped I’d find the words.
It was odd, having my mother beside me in front. I couldn’t remember a time when I drove her for any length of time. It didn’t compute, somehow, to see her knee in my peripheral vision, to feel the small moves she made adjusting herself on the seat.
I was still full of such a mix of conflicting emotions. Not the least of these was still a kind of anger at Caroline, for bringing all this on. I recognized it was unfair, this lack of love and support one should have for a sister. But I didn’t have it. We grew up virtual strangers to each other. It was hard, at this age, to try to create a natural bond I never had, to feel for someone who so often made me impatient. If I were to meet Caroline as someone other than my sister, could I feel sympathy for her? If what she was saying was true, I could. And it was true.
So here beside me, in the form of my mother, was the woman who did all those terrible things to her child. How did one begin a dialogue with such a person? Especially when she was such a different mother to Steve and me. Did she deserve a last chance to defend herself? Did the fact that she was such a recent widow entitle her to more consideration? Should I begin by telling her that things would be different between us from now on, I wondered, and that for one thing she would not be left alone with my children? Or should I not worry about it at the moment and instead start figuring out how I was going to get her and Caroline and me together, thus putting Caroline’s concerns first? Wasn’t it time Caroline came first?
I turned off the radio. “Mom?”
“Don’t let’s talk now,” she said. “Let me just get home first.” I thought I understood her need for the anchoring influence of one’s own things.
“Okay. But I want to tell you, we’re going to meet with Caroline as soon as we get there, you and I. It’s something she asked for, and we’re going to give it to her.”
“All right.”
I was shocked. I had expected anything but matter-of-fact cooperation. I snuck a look over at her: a faded beauty. A woman staring straight ahead seeing nothing. A woman whose hands were in her lap, fists clenched, waiting out the miles.
I turned on the radio again. Then I said, “I’m going to stop for gas soon. I’ll get us some sandwiches.”
“All right.”
“And I’m going to call Caroline to say we’re on the way.”
“Yes, I know. I know you will.” Her hand to her earlobe, checking for the diamond there. Her only ally on this her judgment day.
24
I ONCE WENT TO A PHOTO EXHIBIT AT A MUSEUM OF modern art. Included in it was a display of school photos taken in the early sixties, children mostly around the age of eleven who had been hauled out of class to line up and then sit on a chair before a school photographer, one of those skinny men with bad breath and a defeated attitude who ask kids over and over to smile without caring, particularly, if they smile or not. The pictures at the museum were framed, and there were yards of foil silver stars on wire wrapped around them and pinned up on the wall between them. There were tiny white lights everywhere, too, the kind you put on Christmas trees. Otherwise, the room was dark and the walls were painted black. I remember thinking that this worked well to contribute to the mood of going back in time, of feeling encapsulated. You felt yourself disappearing before all these photos of kids you didn’t know, yet did.
Most of the photos were funny, the kind of thing you point to and giggle: the goofy expressions, the cowlicks, the braces, the glasses, the collars with one side up and one side down. But there was one photo that stopped me in my tracks, that had me standing unsmiling before it for a long time. After I left the exhibit to go and look at other things, I went back to stand before that photo again. Then, as I was putting my coat on, getting ready to go home, I went to go and look at it for a third time. It was a little girl, straight-mouthed and clear-eyed. There was something so compelling in her expression, so deep in her eyes. Looking at her photo had a kind of pulling effect: Standing still, I felt as though I moved into her, then felt inside my own chest the weight of her great sorrow.
I know now—knew then too, probably—that that photo was Caroline to me. And now, years away from what happened to her and what I contributed to, I was ready to move forward in a way that might make a real difference. I felt a little—a little—like I did the time I signed up for tap-dancing lessons at age forty-seven. Not that I saw my intentions as trivial. It was just that I was so late, and I had so much doubt about my abilities.
ABOUT TEN MINUTES FROM CAROLINE’S HOUSE, my mother began to speak. “I read once about how anxiety on behalf of a child can transform itself into aggression against a child.”
I said nothing, but what I was thinking was, I read once about how the weakest of a litter is sometimes destroyed by its siblings. We are all guilty.
She said, “I don’t mean this as an excuse. But I was so brokenhearted after the baby died! I felt her every minute of every day for so long. Reaching for me. I couldn’t climb out of this terrible despair. Aunt Fran used to come and take you, and I would just sit in the rocking chair in Claire’s bedroom and cry and cry and cry. I don’t think I knew my own mind for a long time. Then, after Caroline was born, I told your father I thought I was going crazy. I told him I didn’t love her, that sometimes I felt I hated her, and he said, No, no, you’re fine, you’ve just had a shock, you’ll be fine, of course you love your baby, everybody can see that. And then Caroline was so difficult from the very beginning, such a dark child, so oversensitive and demanding, really, you might not realize this, but she was very demanding. Maybe I had Steve in part to prove to myself that I wasn’t a monster. Maybe—”
“Mom. I think Caroline needs to hear this too. Let’s wait till we get there
.” Somewhere, a pinprick of sympathy for her. A memory of her lifting me up, pointing at something she wanted me to see, kissing my cheek, and then gently wiping away the marks of her red lipstick. A memory of her deteriorating handwriting on the tags of the gifts she sent for my last birthday. Finally, oddly, perhaps, a memory of a scene in a movie about Mary Kay, of Mary Kay Cosmetics, where she is sitting on her bed as an old woman, wigless and without makeup, putting blusher on her rapt young granddaughter, telling her in a soft voice why it’s “verrrry important to put it on your chin and forehead as well as your cheeks. Right?” Her old bones and sunken chest. The tenets on which she built her life now outdated and irrelevant, almost foolish. Though not to her granddaughter. Her granddaughter had her own way of seeing her, and her own relationship to her.
I have a friend from college—Anne—who was recently cleaning out her daughter’s room after her daughter left home to move to her first apartment. I’d always thought they had a terrific relationship, and I told Anne that day how much I admired it. But she said, “You know, I was moving some books off my daughter’s shelf and I was looking at all the titles and it was such a wonderful mix of literature: novels in French, texts on physics and Dutch art, poetry by Neruda, and then—the killer—My Goodnight Book.” This was a picture book Anne used to read to her daughter over and over when she was a little girl. She’d had no idea her daughter had kept it. She started bawling, not only because of the engulfing nostalgia but because she had no idea her daughter had read those other books; they’d never talked about a single one. “I always vowed that I would really know my children—and they me,” she said. “You just can’t do all you intend. Every mother fails.”
I felt the quick sting of tears; one rolled down my cheek. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother handing something over to me. A folded handkerchief, a floral one, lace around the edges, perfumed. “You might need this yourself,” I said, not looking at her.
“I have another,” she said. “I’m never without them. Don’t you know that?”
WHEN WE KNOCKED ON CAROLINE’S DOOR, I was prepared for anything. I accepted that she might carry on for hours, or refuse to talk, or have white bandages wrapped around her wrists that she waved accusingly in front of us. She was completely unreadable when I called and told her we were coming, when I told her about Claire, when I told her that Mom knew I knew everything.
The door opened. Caroline was wearing black pants and a red top, no makeup. She had her hair pulled back, some small hoop earrings on. There were dark circles under her eyes, but her face was blank, noncommittal. From inside, I smelled something chocolaty.
“Come in,” she said, and stepped aside while we went down the hall and into the living room. When we were all seated, Caroline said, “I needed to tell, Mom.”
My mother nodded. She had not yet looked at Caroline.
“It would have been worse to not tell.”
Silence.
It went on and on. I thought of Pete and the kids. I wondered what the dog outside was barking at. I thought of all that might happen after this encounter, wondered whether Caroline would finally free herself from all of us, for which I certainly would not blame her. I wondered how many years it would take for this to settle.
Finally, my mother spoke, her voice low and tentative. “Caroline? Can you tell me about a time in your childhood when you were happy? One time?”
I sat up straighter, ready to hear the onslaught my mother deserved. The selfishness! The cruelty—again! To focus on what was not even the point of this meeting, to make a wounded person turn away from her own vital needs to take care of you!
My sister quietly cleared her throat. “There was a time shortly after . . . It was that summer, a few days before Steve and Laura were going to come home from camp. You and I went for a walk. We were going to buy some groceries, I think. But on the walk, you told me about when you had to get glasses, and Aunt Fran didn’t, and how mad you were. And how ugly the glasses you got were. You said they were so heavy and black, you used to hide them all the time, and one time Grandma sat on them because you hid them under a sofa cushion, and she sat on them and broke them and she was really angry. You hid from her for hours in the lilac bushes and Aunt Fran brought you sandwiches, though you didn’t deserve them, you said, you didn’t deserve them at all. You laughed and you looked so pretty; you were wearing a sky-blue skirt and a white blouse. And then you looked at me and took my hand, and you held it all the way to the store and you tried very hard not to let me see that you were crying. I remember that.”
My mother sat still as a painting; it was hard to see her breathing. Then she said, “And . . . if you could please tell me what you would like me to do now. What I should do.”
“Well, I made some brownies,” Caroline said. “I thought we could all have some, and then maybe we could go shopping together.” I looked over at her, incredulous. That’s it? But when she looked back at me, something in the clarity of her gaze made me feel as though I understood. The conversation I had just witnessed was between the two of them and had nothing to do with me or my expectations of how things should go. Also, it had nothing to do with bitterness or blame or retribution. This was what my sister was saying: Start here.
25
NEXT TO MY BED, I USED TO KEEP A PHOTOGRAPH OF two little girls I didn’t know—sisters, judging from the way they closely resembled each other. They were sitting on a porch swing, laughing. They were barefoot, and they wore baggy shorts and sleeveless T-shirts; they had soda-pop mustaches. Their foreheads were nearly touching and their hands were moving toward each other. It was a movement signifying love and ease, as well as a certain sense of belonging. I kept it there because I liked looking at it; for me, it signified the way families ought to be. People who saw it always said, “Oh, this is you and your sister.” And I always laughed and said, “No, I have no idea who that is.” This begged another question, of course, about why I would keep a photo of strangers next to my bed, which was never asked and so never answered.
But Hannah, who just started sixth grade, was recently told to write an essay defining what family meant. She described this assignment, uncharacteristically, as impossible. When I asked her why, she said, “Because it’s too slippery to say what a family is. It always changes.” But she did write the assignment, and in it she said what I thought was a wise thing. She said that you are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.
It was reading Hannah’s words that prompted me to replace the photo of the little girls I never knew with something else.
It is winter, and Caroline and I are lying outside on the ground, making snow angels. We are head to head, and the photo was snapped when our arms were stretched up, our fingers touching. Our eyes are closed, and we are smiling.
I remember how carefully we stepped away from our imprints, how very much we wanted to leave behind a flawless image. And I remember standing beside her after we got up and seeing that we had done it: There in the snow before us were two perfect angels. But more snow was on the way; already tiny flakes were beginning to swirl around us. All the evidence of our little success would vanish.
Caroline looked up at the gathering clouds, heavy and gray, and shrugged. She said, “We can make another one. We have a lot of days left to go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIZABETH BERG is the author of twelve previous novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club Selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, she is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.
ALSO BY ELIZABETH BERG
Say When
True to Form
Ordinary Life: Stories
Never
Change
Open House
Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True
Until the Real Thing Comes Along
What We Keep
Joy School
The Pull of the Moon
Range of Motion
Talk Before Sleep
Durable Goods
Family Traditions
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Elizabeth Berg
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berg, Elizabeth.
The art of mending: a novel / Elizabeth Berg.
p. cm.
1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Repression (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Mother and child—Fiction. 4. Family reunions—Fiction. 5. Forgiveness—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.E6996A88 2004
813'.54—dc22 2003066726
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-387-9
v3.0
The Art of Mending Page 18